A Second Thought
by doom-eagle
Summary: A 40,000 one-shot that I changed so I could use it for a school assignment. I changed it back but there will be parts I have missed. I'm not sure what genre it will fit into, so I will set it as General/Sci-Fi. Reviews/pointing out flaws welcome.


A Second Thought.

A klaxon sounded. After a flurry of rushed equipment checks and muttered prayers to the God-Emperor, the men of the 43rd Illarion Guardsmen Regiment spilled forth from their armoured shelters, beginning their slog across the fifteen miles of mire that made up the no-man's-land between their concrete bunkers and the heavily defended trench network that was home to the insurgents that they were there to eradicate. This final charge was the culmination of eighteen months of long-range barrages from each faction's artillery emplacements while the foot soldiers kept their heads down in their dugouts and concrete shelters to try and survive the enemy counter-barrages. It had seemed a long conflict, the eighteen months dragged by reluctantly, with nothing for the men to do but play cards and dice for matchsticks while they waited for the next incoming missile barrage or mortar strike to send them diving under the nearest table or bed. Now they had some action to alleviate the monotony.

For the first few miles there was nothing on the horizon, the soldiers tramped through bleak muddy terrain that soon covered their boots in glistening brown smears. Guardsman 426 was at the very front of the advancing arrowhead that the regiment had adopted as they ran. The dull monotony of the muddy trudge gave him time think. He recalled his many desperate moments and last stands against superior forces and he wondered how he had escaped with his life, not to mention the rest of his squad. He passed a crater in the mud, blown out by a poorly aimed mortar round. A rock at the edge of the hole was burnt and blackened on one side, but bright white on the other, bleached by the powerful sunlight. As he moved past the stone he thought of his time deep in a vast desert, the name of which he was never told, on some nameless, baked planet fighting a guerrilla war with nomad tribesmen who had rejected the Emperor's light in order to revert to their old, heretic ways. Each squad in the regiment had been mounted in a Chimera APC for that conflict, to try and match the terrifying speed at which the tribesmen flitted about the desert on their steroid-enhanced camels. The only signs that the nomad's even existed were random strikes on unsuspecting targets; a raid on a refuelling point one day, a few days later some grenades dropped down the hatches of stationary APC's, as the crews slept in camouflaged tents nearby, but in between; not a trace. Even flyovers from reconnaissance aircraft could provide no clue as to where these desert men struck from or fled to; only that they must have done so extremely quickly. Eventually the commanders in charge of the campaign ordered the regiment out of the desert and ended the conflict by carpet bombing the entire desert for three consecutive days and three consecutive nights. The effect was shocking. On the morning of the fourth day, mere hours after the last bombs had fallen, the regiment were sent back into the desert to see if the bombings had worked. They had. As the formation of Chimeras reached the tip of a sand dune and began descending the bank on the other side the gunner on the third vehicle from the left of the line cried out. There, in a vast basin surrounded by dunes was a camp. An enormous camp. Or, at least, the remains of an enormous camp. Every tent was burnt down to a black, twisted frame. Men lay everywhere, their charred bodies interspersed with groups of dead camels. Some still moaned and cried out, those not lucky enough to have died. Across the radios an order spread; kill all survivors. Over the next four hours Guardsman 426 shot seventeen men between the eyes, and heaped endless more bodies onto piles of corpses that were to be counted and burned; burial would be too time consuming and the bodies would not stay beneath the ground for long due to the shifting sands of the desert, carried by the winds.

Now the infantry arrowheads had been joined by armoured vehicles. Squadrons of lumbering Leman Russ battle tanks ground along behind the foot soldiers as they advanced. Scattered among the tanks were support vehicles, Chimeras carrying radar and satellite communication equipment, as well as ones loaded with extra shells and ammunition for the Leman Russ formations' cannons and side armaments. Arriving simultaneously with the tanks were the Sentinels. These machines stalked among the infantrymen; mostly armed with heavy flamers to better flush the rebels from their trenches. Guardsman 426's mind began to wander, and soon arrived at a scene from another conflict, his most recent before the current campaign. Deep in a jungle on a vast Feral World, the regiment were tasked with clearing out any human occupation of their appointed sector; the inhabitants of which clung to their ancient heritage, resisting the Emperor's truth. They were commanded to clear the area of any human life, civilian or military; not that there was much of a difference. Children, barely as tall as a man's waist, carried old rifles and were trained by their families to set traps and kill people twice their height by slashing the arteries in their victim's legs with sharpened stakes, and then stabbing them in the gut. The women each carried an impressive array of blades; ranging from light daggers, useful for throwing, to swords that were taller than the oldest of the children they raised. The regiment had quietly approached a village in the dead of night the final pocket of life in their designated sector of the jungle. Men from each squad lobbed flares over the village's primitive stake fence and fired bursts from their lasguns into the air to confuse their targets. They stormed in through every gate and gap in the fence, with more Guardsmen scaling the short fence to truly obliterate their foes with numbers and firepower. The weapon fire from the Guardsmen had become organised; three-shot bursts to drop each villager, working in groups to cover any guardsman as he changed the power pack on his lasgun, just as they had been trained. By the angry red glow of the flare-light they killed. As each Guardsman ran out of power packs, he would draw a long combat knife and resume his work. The "official figures" that were given to the men of the regiment stated that two hundred and fifty villagers had died in the attack. This was a lie, Guardsman 426 and the other men in his group took at least that many lives between them, and they were only a section of the overall assault on the village.

Now only a few more miles separated them from their destination. Without doubt, they would be being picked up by the insurgents' radar now. The first of the defensive barrages would begin shortly. The first whistles of incoming shells were audible a few minutes later. A Chimera behind and to the left of Guardsman 426 let off a chain of shots from its Multi-Laser. This was perfectly accurate, with the gunner's aim improved with the built-in targeters of the vehicle. The surface to surface missile that was headed their way exploded in mid-flight. The hot shrapnel that fell was by far preferable to the alternative. This was happening all over the advancing formation. Missiles were shot from the heavens by the Multi-Lasers on the front of the Chimeras that were dotted among the Leman Russ squadrons. As the insurgents' position came into view the purpose of the Leman Russ support was seen. A string of bangs was followed by a series of blasts; tearing aside corrugated iron and wooden defences, destroying enemy fighters. The Guardsmen began firing, brief bursts of suppressive fire to cover their advance. Guardsman 426 let off a few shots as he ran at the trenches. The braver of the rebels dared to poke their heads over their weak barricades and took pot shots in a vain attempt to halt the hardened and trained soldiers.

As Guardsman 426 began to increase his pace into a full sprint over the last hundred yards to his chosen point of attack; one such brave soul sprang up from a trench, even from where Guardsman 426 saw he was little more than a teenager with a rifle. The boy let off four desperate shots. Two sailed over Guardsman's 426's head, but the third struck his helmet, hissing loudly and melting a pockmark into the surface. The fourth shot killed him. As he dropped to the ground, blood flowing from the smoking hole in his neck, two thoughts entered Guardsman 426's mind. The first was of disbelief. After his years of war and killing, the countless lives he had snuffed out, he had been killed himself by the last desperate shot of a terrified young boy who had probably never seen a dying man before, let alone killed one himself. The second thought was painful. Why, as he had slogged across the muck and muck; thinking of war, pain and death, had he not even once thought of his home, his family; or the families he himself had torn asunder.


End file.
